Just about all of the traditional dishes served at feasts celebrating the Chinese New Year symbolize something wonderful to come. Round foods in particular are rich with meaning, their coin-like shape considered a nod to prosperity.

Who doesn’t love chocolate truffles? They are the essence of chocolate, and a sure-fire mood enhancer. Pop even one into your mouth and see if you don’t get happy.

Given the richness of a chocolate truffle — a blend of chocolate, sugar and cream — it’s nice that chocolate has been found to be good for us. Still, assuming you wanted to jettison some of the calories in this treat without sacrificing a molecule of its lush flavor, where would you start? Cutting the chocolate or sugar would be a bad idea. Both are needed. But how about the cream?

With the holidays getting into full swing, life for most of us is getting hectic. Between all the big meals, the parties, the kids needing treats for their classes, never mind our day jobs! Who has time for it all?

Spaghetti with clams — or spaghetti alle vongole to the Italians — is one of my favorite dishes: simple, flavorful and satisfying.

In this case, I went in search of an alternative to white-flour spaghetti — something equally satisfying, but more nutritious. My first thought was whole-wheat pasta. My second was barley, which is even more healthful. A terrific source of fiber, barley is a well-known substitute for rice. I was pretty sure it’d be a fine stand-in for spaghetti, too, not least because its nutty flavor offers a pleasing contrast to the blandness of spaghetti.

I have always been a huge fan of the Chinese dumplings known as pot stickers. They’re wonton wrappers filled with pork or shrimp, crisped up in a pan, steamed, re-crisped, then served with a dipping sauce. Yum!

This is the perfect dish for a weeknight dinner in late summer, particularly as the kids start heading back to school and family schedules get crazy again. The recipe calls for just a handful of ingredients that can all be pulled together in the time it takes to boil water.

Tomatoes are the star of this show, as they should be this time of the year. A fresh local tomato at the height of ripeness is one of those things that make life worth living.

When I was growing up, I loved my mom’s stuffed eggs. Heck, as a chubby and happy-go-lucky kid, I loved anything filled with mayonnaise.

As I grew older, I figured out that these seductive little bite-sized appetizers (also called deviled eggs, at least when spiked with something hot) were packed with calories. Happily, I now know that you don’t need a ton of mayonnaise to make a tasty filling. This recipe satisfies the heedless little kid in me and the more prudent grown-up.

One of the earliest French culinary imports to make a dent in America was the crepe. As a kid in New York during the ’60s, I remember dining with my family at quite a few creperies. I also remember the black steel crepe pan my folks bought, a token of their desire to make crepes at home every once in a while.